Mark Textor remarked recently that the biggest change he'd observed during his years as a political strategist was the "greater and greater divide between the reactions of public opinion and the reaction of the media blogosphere and Twitter writing".

Having found himself brought undone by his own use of Twitter, comparing an Indonesian Minister with a Filipino porn star, Textor on Thursday was reduced to using "Twitter writing" to apologise to everyone from his Indonesian friends to his followers.

Textor has referred to the divide between ordinary Australians and elite political observers as the "two-speed political economy". On one side, in his view, babbles the fast lane of journalists and commentators talking to themselves; on the other, "poor voters just wanting to know", with a thirst for facts about how particular policies would affect their lives.

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His problem this week was that he became one of those commentators talking to themselves while persuading himself he was reflecting the frustrations of an outsider. One of the smartest and toughest of Australia's political operators blew himself up with just a few words tossed on one side of his two-speed political economy, and he needed to patch up his wounds pronto.

Textor has long prided himself with the ability to listen and then divine what ordinary people want, and to persuade politicians, parties and big business to deliver it. He is considered, in the words of one interviewer, "the suburban whisperer, a man able to conjure up what's in the hearts and minds or ordinary Australians".

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He operates largely behind the scenes, but his increasingly robust texting excursions into the world of Twitter have suddenly given him an uncomfortable new celebrity within that great divide he has discerned in political discourse.

His tweeted view that Indonesian Foreign Affairs Minister Marty Natalegawa "looks like a 1970s Pilipino porn star and has ethics to match" has thrust him firmly into the sights of the political commentariat - who disapprove, mightily - and have added to the Abbott government's difficulties in dealing with an already incensed Indonesian political elite.

His comments ran on Thursday on the front page of the Indonesian newspaper Kompass under a headline declaring he was an Australian politician: "Australian politicians call Indonesian Foreign Secretary Porn star", shouted the headline, translated from the Bahasa language. In short, in Indonesia, Textor's "porn star" aspersion is being reported as the view of the Abbott government.

For Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is currently trying to work out how to calm President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono over revelations that Australia has been tapping the phones of not just the President, but also his wife, it could hardly have come at a worse time, nor have been interpreted more unfortunately in Jakarta.

Textor himself clearly recognised he had placed himself in a tight corner when, with the whole issue running hot, he tweeted early afternoon on Thursday "Apologies to my Indonesian friends - frustrated by media-driven divisions - Twitter is indeed no place for diplomacy".

He followed up by offering that his conduct had been "unbecoming" and offered apologies to his followers. Finally, he tweeted that "SBY (President Susilo Bambang Yughoyono) a statesman", and just to be sure, withdrew any unintended inference that his earlier comment about Twitter being no place for diplomacy was a dig at SBY's use of Twitter to attack the Abbott government.

The call by Malcolm Fraser to sack Textor as the Liberals' pollster, the disapproval of the commentariat and Abbott's discomfiture are, however, unlikely to prove a long-term setback for Mark Textor. He has proved too valuable.

Conservative political parties around the world - including that of Abbott - have come to rely on the instincts of Textor, who, with former Liberal Party federal director Lynton Crosby founded the firm Crosby Textor in 2002. The company's website boasts of 800-plus polling projects and 250-plus election campaigns in 60-plus countries.

In Australia, Crosby Textor are known as the Liberal Party's pollsters, but the company - and Textor himself - are far more than that. They are much hated by the Labor Party - and secretly admired by Labor hardheads - for Textor's research, ability to discern what ordinary Australians are feeling and subsequent advice are credited with winning election after election for John Howard and now, for helping make Abbott Prime Minister. Long-time Labor pollster Rod Cameron declared in 2010 that: “There are probably only two or three good political qualitative researchers in Australia at the moment. The Liberals have got one [Textor]. Labor haven't got any.”

It was Textor, according to many accounts, who came up with Abbott's highly effective mantra of "We will stop the boats, stop the big new taxes, end the waste and pay back the debt".

Yet Mark Textor doesn't much enjoy talking on-the-record to the media, particularly those journalists who work for organisations such as Fairfax Media, which he dismisses as "sliding into irrelevancy". He's increasingly taken to Twitter to say so, even though he writes a regular column for the Fairfax-owned Australian Financial Review.

Indeed, his "porn star" tweet was directed as much against Fairfax's reporting of the crisis in Australian-Indonesian relations as it was about the Indonesian Foreign Minister. He chose as the hashtag for his tweet "#Fairfax demands appeasement".

Even if, as is likely, Textor believes his view reflects that of many Australians who are unimpressed by Jakarta screaming about Australian espionage - the pot calling the kettle black - he and his partner Crosby are likely to be ruing the timing and the outcry.

Crosby Textor all but closed their Canberra operation when Labor occupied the government benches under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, for they had no serious access to the corridors of power. On Wednesday night, just as the Textor tweet row was gathering steam, with new clients knocking on their doors, knowing they had the ear of the Abbott government, they threw a lavish Christmas party for more than 100 guests.

Mark Textor may understand what ordinary Australians think, but he knows, too, that big corporates, just like new governments, don't much like controversy. And they pay him to operate.